Journal article
Affective control in adolescence: the influence of age and depressive symptomatology on working memory
- Abstract:
- People exhibit marked individual variation in their ability to exercise cognitive control in affectively charged situations. Affective control is typically assessed in laboratory settings by comparing performance in carefully constructed executive tasks performed in both affectively neutral and affectively charged contexts. There is some evidence that affective control undergoes significant improvement throughout adolescence, though it is unclear how adolescents deemed at risk of developing depression exercise affective control despite poor affective control being identified as a contributing factor to ongoing mental ill health in adulthood. The present study therefore investigated affective control in a large (n = 425) sample of adolescents (aged 11–18 years) collected from 2016 to 2018. A simultaneous visuospatial search and written storage working memory (WM) capacity task was carried out to examine affective control, using affectively neutral and affectively negative social images as the task-irrelevant distractors. Overall, WM capacity increased as a function of age across both affective conditions. Moreover, we report a significant difference between affective conditions, with WM capacity slightly lower during trials with affectively negative social scenes, relative to neutral. Performance in each condition and the performance “cost” for completing the task in negative relative to neutral conditions was not modulated by depressive symptoms. Furthermore, age did not predict performance cost, irrespective of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that WM capacity is relatively robust against socioaffective contexts and mood in adolescents.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 514.0KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1037/emo0001390
Authors
+ Wellcome Trust
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 104908/Z/14/Z
- 107496/Z/15/Z
- Publisher:
- American Psychological Association
- Journal:
- Emotion More from this journal
- Volume:
- 25
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 70-78
- Publication date:
- 2024-08-29
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-04-06
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1931-1516
- ISSN:
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1528-3542
- Pmid:
-
39207391
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2025051
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2025051
- Deposit date:
-
2024-10-07
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Griffiths et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 2024 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format for noncommercial use provided the original authors and source are credited and a link to the license is included in attribution. No derivative works are permitted under this license.
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